CUBA: 1 BID FOR ASYLUM WAS A 'PROVOCATION'

July 20, 1990

HAVANA, JULY 19 -- Five Cubans occupying a Czechoslovak diplomat's house in Havana surrendered today. Cuba said it would prove that Cubans who had sought refuge at the Czechoslovak Embassy were part of a deliberate provocation.

The four men and one woman gave up quietly after spending a week at the house of Charge d'affaires Jan Domok in the diplomatic district.

Czechoslovakia had refused them protection because they forced their way in violently a week ago and demanded Czechoslovak help to leave the country. Czechoslovak diplomats had said they suspected the five may not have been genuine political asylum seekers.

The five were the last of 19 Cubans who sought shelter with the Czechoslovaks, sparking a bitter quarrel between Cuba and its former Communist ally. Fourteen other Cubans sheltering at the Czechoslovak Embassy had already given themselves up to Cuban authorities, who said they would not be punished.

The official Communist Party daily Granma said Cuban television would show tonight a special program containing evidence from some of the would-be asylum seekers at the Czechoslovak Embassy. This evidence would "prove irrefutably the Cuban government's affirmation that this provocation was deliberate and planned," Granma said.

Cuba's Communist government was also embroiled in controversy with Spain, with which it has traditionally retained close ties because of Spain's colonial history here.

Madrid recalled its ambassador Wednesday for consultations about a dispute over four Cubans taking shelter in the Spanish Embassy. Today, Spain lodged a formal protest in the rift and also said a Cuban nuclear physicist had requested political asylum at Madrid's Barajas airport during a stop on a Moscow-Havana flight.

Western diplomats expressed surprise at the strength of the Spanish reaction, saying it could freeze recent moves by Spanish businessmen to invest in an ambitious Cuban tourism program.